The Shimmerist community center opened! The SSP’s first official outpost in New York.
It was a large house repurposed for this occasion, located in a sleepy, woodsy part of town where it’d be hard for the neighbors to hear anything. Adding to their privacy was the erection of a huge, metal fence around the perimeter, one that wouldn’t be too out of place surrounding a prison.
But that privacy had a time limit. This was America still. That meant every neighborhood had a certain number of busybodies on constant lookout for opportunities to snitch or make their neighbor’s lives worse.
At that stage, there was still some renovation being done here and there. Bulletproof glass for the windows, high-tech security systems, fancy doors that could quarantine a shooter. It at least made everybody feel safer. No unannounced guests would be showing up.
They had a small chapel downstairs for more religiously minded people, though Ari wouldn’t be leading any prayers. Most of the downstairs was converted to a communal area for activities. And she had her own bedroom upstairs. A place to live.
Ari still didn’t own a house. She still never would even if everything went according to plan. But somehow that didn’t feel like a horrible loss anymore.
In the short few weeks of its existence, Ari gathered a decent number of Shimmerists. Magic Card got the first leads, then they invited the other Shimmerists they knew and it all branched out like that.
If Ari wanted to sound big and impressive she could say there were 125 members. There were technically 125 members. It was just most of them had never actually been to the community center.
There were three circles of human Shimmerists surrounding Ari in her mind. The first were people like her, Pamela, and Dresden who were super active in the community and Ari saw more days than not. The second was less active members who tried to show up once a week but didn’t always make it, who used one or two of their services, and who were active but only when something interesting was going on. Those two groups brought their number up to 35 or so.
The final circle was this large, thin cloud that surrounded them. People who were only on their discord server and weren’t even very active on their. People who wanted someone to confess their feelings to, to have some indirect connection to the SSP, who wanted to be part of a Shimmerist community but were too scared to be seen doing it in real life.
Those guys were certainly better than nothing. Ari got a few hundred dollars in donations from them each week. All of that went back to the SSP.
When she addressed the whole thirty or so of her new community, it felt so empowering. Though the crowd may be small it was so much more than nothing. Ari had risen to being very slightly more than powerless.
“We may not agree on everything,” Ari said to her gathered crowd, “but one thing we all have in common is that we agree we’d all be better off as ponies! That everyone should have the right to decide for themselves!”
And having that comradery gave her a powerful connection to them all. Nobody here disagreed with that statement. All of them accepted and shared Ari’s desire. And that meant so much to her. Though preaching to the choir with these weekly speeches, it was still an intoxicating rush.
“Next week we’ll actually be hosting two ponies who will share their experience with the vision with us,” Ari announced. “You don’t want to miss that one.”
Most of them left a little while after their weekly planned activities ended. She looked over her more hardcore members, the ones who hung around the community center even when no activities were being held.
They had a small event board, slowly growing in frequency but still only a few events a week.
To Ari’s surprise, Pamela was her most active follower. Though coming off as meek at first, she was completely devoted to the cause and community, volunteering for everything on the board. She only worked part-time so she had plenty of time and donated almost all of it. A number of the Shimmerists had kids so the center offered babysitting, something Pamela largely took care of.
So it was a frequent sight to have her and a small mess of kids running around Ari’s new house. Ari wanted to help out with that too but was so busy with setting everything up. Even after almost a month, there was so much to do.
“Hey. Ari?” Pamela approached her.
“Yeah?”
“Is it okay if my mom comes to visit this place sometime?”
“Is she anti-pony?”
“Not exactly. She just thinks you’re like.” Pamela shied away a moment. “That you’re a cult leader.”
Ari smiled at the idea. She’d been wrapped up in that sort of thing before. But Shimmerism was completely different.
“She knows this is practically a mainstream religion at this point, right?”
“I keep telling her that but…”
“I get it. I’ll talk to her, I guess.”
Pamela smiled but Ari had no real hope of converting her mother to the light of Shimmerism. But maybe she could do some good.
“Are you doing anything today?” Ari asked, already knowing the answer.
“I’ll do anything to further the cause!” Pamela pledged.
“Good. Because we have a mission today. Our first mission.”
They soon gathered the lingering people Ari wanted to take with her. Ari looked at her team. The only other girl was Pamela as she mostly needed guys for what she was planning on doing. That made six of them in total.
They ran a gambit of excitement from Pamela who stood at attention, eager to do anything to help the cause, to Dresden who was always half reluctant but never actually said no to any of Ari’s ideas.
“And where are you taking us today?” Dresden asked.
“Now that we’re all Shimmerists we have to try living up to the ideals of the vision. ‘Ponies always help’ and it should be our goal to be as like the ponies as possible. So who needs our help the most in this town?”
Ari held her arms out wide, waiting for an answer.
“Is it.” Pamela timidly raised a hand. “All the homeless people wandering around?”
“Exactly! We’re going to head over there to help out with the crisis,” said Ari. “Just remember we can’t tell anybody we’re Shimmerists. That’s still too dangerous. If anybody asks we just say we’re with a church.”
It wasn’t completely inaccurate. Dresden wanted more specifics but Ari didn’t actually have any so she merely dragged them out without saying much more. They parked not far from where Ari used to live, a place she passed frequently on the way to work.
She wouldn’t dare have done this before. But having four guys following her gave her a rare sense of invulnerability. Ari wasn’t even tall for a woman and her disability made her even more vulnerable. She never once left home without her pepper spray and that included today.
The abandoned parking lot was back to being un-abandoned. Somebody finally tore down that gate Ari had vandalized and a sea of tents filled the concrete plains. If anything, the number had only grown.
Ari took a deep breath. No more running away from this place. Ponies always helped.
She stepped across the fuzzy, invisible barrier with her entourage in tow. That brief moment of fear was all she got. This place had no power over her anymore. Her alliance with the ponies meant homelessness was no longer a constant threat looming over her.
The people of the homeless city did the best they could. A pile of refuse lay on either side of the camp and there was some organization. Some of the tents even looked reasonably clean. They could only go so far in these conditions and trash and stench did come wafting out onto the streets.
Worse than any of that was the absolute hopelessness of those around them. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. So much human capital laid about like discarded rags with no possible change in sight, no promise from anyone in power but that doubling down on corporatism or hating the right people might solve the problem.
She’d never even noticed the huge building in the back had been a Target once. Sadly, no one could take shelter inside. The doors were covered in chains and metal bars that nobody had found a way around just yet. And the windows were covered over with freaking cement, just to make double sure the enormous structure helped nobody in these dark times.
It looked like somebody saved those ‘Ponies make it possible’ posters when the gate got torn down. They were worse than the wear from being removed and reposted, but still legible. They’d been put up all along the sides of the former Target.
At least somebody here was on their side.
“So what? Are we going to hand out blankets and food?” Dresden asked upon the completion of their tour.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Dresden was unimpressed by Ari’s lack of planning.
What he suggested was all well and good but there were already people doing that. There was a church group there at that exact moment with a makeshift food stand giving out bagels and coffee. Charity afforded these people plenty of blankets and jackets, and enough food to survive, but that was its limit.
Ari wanted to stand out from the others, needed to, was supposed to. The question was what else could be done? She could always ask the ponies to figure it out for her, but she wanted to prove herself as more than a mindless grunt.
“This place smells really horrible.” Pamela had kept her nose covered this whole time. “I don’t want to ask where they’ve been going to the bathroom.”
No one could deny the filth of this place. Then again all but the richest parts of town were filthy by now. Any public trash you could find was surrounded by a pile of rotting trash. There was either zero effort to clean it all up or just such a colossal heap that nobody could keep up with it.
That garbage was one of the main things souring people on the idea of helping the homeless. Humans were insolating rather than coming together like the ponies like Sunset wanted. The people with jobs were driving even larger SUVs, all the major car manufacturers recently announced a line of what amounted to armored vehicles to protect the haves from the have-nots in this post-apocalypse. More and more neighborhoods were building gates and walls around themselves to the point it was harder to get around on back roads.
Suspiciously, Blackrock was more than eager to ‘help’ with ‘securing the suburbs’ and was making all sorts of deals with the mayor. Anyone who thought accepting that off was a good idea was an idiot. They’d all be boxed into little micro-dictatorships run by Blackrock, forking all their money over in rent soon enough.
But Ari also saw an opportunity here…
“No!” Ari stopped and turned to face her group. “That’s a good question. Why is there garbage everywhere?”
None of her fellow Shimmerists wanted to state the obvious answer.
“Because where the fuck am I supposed to toss this shit?!”
Ari stumbled back, not realizing she’d been standing right next to somebody’s pile of junk. After a brief cough, she regained her composure.
“Exactly.” Ari pointed to him. “Because where are they supposed to toss their shit? Every public garbage can for fifty miles is overflowing and the county doesn’t look like they’re going to do anything about it. So I say we do it ourselves! We’ll clean up the town in the most literal sense!”
The SSP gave them a little money for humanitarian operations. Though they’d need a new word to replace ‘humanitarian’ eventually.
Ari used it to rent a few dumpsters and portable toilets that she parked inside the homeless camp. Then she could privately dispose of it all when they filled up. And they did fill up way faster than she thought. Just not enough to actually stress her budget.
With that half of the problem mitigated, they started on the more physically intensive side of things… picking up ten million pieces of litter.
Even if Ari’s entire community volunteered for this it wouldn’t be enough. But thankfully most of the homeless people weren’t actually drug-addled layabouts like politicians wanted you to believe. That said they also didn’t have anything better to do. So Ari would give them something.
On the day the dumpsters were planted, Ari decided to take advantage of the gratitude she could feel washing all around her. Restoring just this much dignity restored life to this pit of destitution.
With several of her guys behind her, Ari stood up on a small box to implore them to help. An eager crowd gathered around to listen.
“I’m glad you all have somewhere to put your garbage now. But this is only half the problem. The streets around here are still a massive dump!”
There was some impatience from the crowd, people saying it wasn’t their fault. She remembered a piece of advice from Ragnarok. Never directly blame humans or the people you were talking to for any problem. Always deflect it from them to the government or the corporations.
“I know it isn’t your fault. But the mayor isn’t interested in keeping this place clean so it’s up to all of us to take care of this town. Blackrock and the town are
using all this garbage to paint people like us as subhuman and justify all kinds of bullshit. I say we don’t give them the chance. This will be the cleanest place in town if you all help out.”
There was plenty of hate at Blackrock, being the reason why half of these people were homeless in the first place. And then Ari had a small army of volunteers going through the streets with her.
It took all day but they had all day. The streets surrounding the parking lot slowly returned to what they had been pre-ETS. The public trash bins were emptied out. But the smell still lingered.
Doing work, actual work with actual benefits felt surprisingly satisfying. Even if it was something most people would consider menial.
She awoke the next day feeling plenty triumphant. It felt like her first major victory. The first one where ponies hadn’t carried her over the finish line outright.
Then she looked through the mail.
A letter from the city…
She opened it with much trepidation to find she had a citation for illegally parking those dumpsters on ‘private property’. Who the fuck even owned that place she could only imagine. She could only imagine they’d already been removed.
“Dammit! Somebody already snitched?”